New paintings and regular art updates.
Welcome to my messy house.
Drawing coats hung up on our wardrobe which is in the living room because it’s too big to get up the stairs.
The coats are mainly black jackets. I’m thinking of selling the wardrobe, but it’s full of ‘stuff’ so I will have to empty it. Train sets, a patio umbrella, badminton rackets, a hockey stick…. Things, you know, life!
Anyway this is our 21st days drawing challenge with USK Stoke-on-Trent. Every day is different.
X
Wow, I look quite sad in this drawing, but I’m not. It is just my face falls into a slight frown whan I’m concentrating.
Faults with this, my eyes are probably a bit to far apart? Looking at my phone to do this. It’s not the same as looking in a mirror. The image is quite small and the screen kept switching off. The background is a more than thirty year old painting I did at our previous house.
This was today’s challenge for the urban sketchers group in Stoke-on-Trent. Day twenty. Hanging in there.
X
I drew this today, sitting in the garden, looking at a jumble of narcissi and other plants ( I’m not sure of their names).
Another of the USK Stoke thirty day challenge. I’m really enjoying this series of sketches. Every day a different way of stretching our practice. So many different sketches by different artists. I hope you like this.
This one is ‘hanging on the wall’ as you can see I’ve got a lot of stuff on the mantelpiece and on the wall. I haven’t drawn the dust! I don’t move stuff around much. I think it would all fall off if I did. I’ve also missed out the crack in the chimney breast.
I’m really enjoying this 30day challenge and hope we continue to do more once this month if work is over. It’s interesting having prompts. I might not like some if them, but it gives me ideas for things to sketch. And also the opportunity to translate them into what fits in around my life.
I’ve reconnected with drawing more over the last couple of weeks than I had done for years. My only sadness is that my eyes are not as acute as they were. I have presbyopia, which means the lens in your eyes doesn’t change shape as well, so it’s harder to focus in on close stuff. I have reading glasses, but when I want to look close, then at distance it’s a bit annoying. Anyway I just peer over the top of my glasses. Plus my lines are wobbly.. But you can’t have everything. It’s just a sketch xxx
A feathery or furry picture in blues. I would like to set up a service where I can print things off for people, but I’ve always been a bit nervous of etsy and shopify. I almost dipped my toe in last weekend, but the cost of it, in these difficult times, put me off.
It’s difficult to find a balance between art and selling. I really think I need a manager. At the moment I do things myself. That’s the reality, I have to try and get things right……
I did have contact with a company a few years ago who offered to take my designs and pay me 25%. But when I looked into their practices I found out they were slow paying artists and the things they made were sometimes of a oor quality. That was another thing that put me off.
#uskstoke challenge. Today’s was to draw something furry or feathered. My cats were my subject. I used a 5b pencil on cartridge paper in a Daler Rowney, soft white, A4 sketchbook. One cat was on the cat tree which has several trays to sleep on. The other moggie was on the pile of washing that needs folding up. I’m going to do it when he gets off! He’s been asleep there most of the day.
So yeah, I could have done the birds outside. But apart from the odd wood pigeon, they don’t stay still long enough to draw.
X
This was a drawing experiment a few years ago. It was an ArtRage oils drawing, using colours then mainly the dry marker to subdue the strength of the original brushes. You can use a sliding scale to alter the brush sizes and strength of the metallic colours, so sometimes the colours look shiny and other times matt. It’s worth playing with different tools in apps, it increases your knowledge. I’ve found some apps really difficult to use, especially if I don’t use them very often. But I will modify what I do, and play around with things to see what results I get. I end up with a series of images, then edit out ones I don’t like. Sometimes I keep all of them so I can show how my work progresses.
Cheers x
If you are bored, look up. You may be surprised at what you see. Clouds can be unicorns or dragons, fish or faces.
When I was young I would lie on my back and look up at the sky. Watching the clouds rush with rapidity or drift with stately slowness. Like the galleons I drew in my school exercise books. Then it was pirates racing to catch treasure ships.
Thunder clouds were mountains, or giant anvils, sometimes clouds looked like waves on the sea, or hills and beaches.
I gradually learnt a few of the names of clouds, cirrus, cumulo nimbus, stratus. Each had a wonderful ring to them. Magical beauty flying high over head.
Later I learned a bit about chaos theory, and fractals. How if you magnify a bit of a cloud, the close up looks like the larger image. I heard songs like Cloudbusting by Kate Bush, and about clouds being seeded to make rain fall.
You see they are interesting creatures, even if they are not mythical beasts.
So, if you are interested, look up the cloud appreciation society. They have a page on Facebook. Their founder set up a group which people can join. They have a cloud of the month, and sometimes send out a newsletter.
With climate change, and the increase in severity of the weather, its interesting to find out how water vapour can be so beautiful and yet so wild.
X
Grab a stylus and doodle your cat. I used ArtRage oils to draw this. I didn’t have enough memory on my phone so I deleted it, but I’ve uploaded it onto another device. So maybe I can get on and do a few more digital drawings.
Lockdown, I hope it means I will be doing more art, if I can get my mojo back.
Does being shut for the duration mean you’ve lost yours too or are you being brilliantly creative?
Stay indoors, stay safe…. X
I don’t remember when I did this but I found it on my camera so I thought I would share it.
I remember it was taken from a black and white photo of my hand, and then I scanned it and manipulated it in photo shop.
It was called lifeline. I don’t know where it is now. It just seems appropriate for the situation at the moment.
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